Armenian Catholic Church

Armenian Catholic Church, an Eastern-rite member of the Roman Catholic church. The Armenians embraced Christianity about ad 300 and were the first people to do so as a nation. About 50 years after the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Armenians repudiated the Christological decisions of the council and became the Armenian Apostolic (Orthodox) Church, a body that basically adhered to the doctrinal beliefs of Eastern Orthodoxy. There were Armenian Catholics, however, as early as the 12th century among the Armenians who fled from Muslim oppressors and established the kingdom of Little Armenia in Cilicia. Although the kingdom collapsed in 1375, Armenian Catholic monks, known as the Friars of Unity of St. Gregory the Illuminator, laid the groundwork for the future Armenian Catholic Church under Dominican influence.

The church came into being in 1740, when the Armenian bishop of Aleppo, Abraham Artzivian, already a Catholic, was elected patriarch of Sis (now Kozan, Turkey), in Cilicia. In 1911 the Armenian Catholic Church was divided into 19 dioceses; but, during the persecution of the Armenians in Turkey (1915–18), several dioceses were abolished, and the faithful left for other countries. In 1928 the church’s hierarchical organization was revised, and new episcopal sees were successively erected. The Armenian patriarch of Cilicia now resides in Beirut and personally administers that diocese. There exist further three archdioceses (Aleppo, Baghdad, and Istanbul), three dioceses (Alexandria, Eṣfahān, and Kamichlie, Syria), one apostolic exarchy (Paris), and two ordinariates (Athens, and Gherla, Romania). The head of the Armenian Catholics is called “Patriarch of the Catholic Armenians and Katholikos of Cilicia” and has always taken the name Peter. The liturgy continues to be celebrated in the classical Armenian language.